As a gamer who grew up in the 80’s, lots of games that have any significant online component at all feel like this now. If you don’t pick it up in the first couple months, forget it. It’ll be full of people who play 9 hours a day and it’ll have so many layers of systems and currencies it feels like an absurdist satire. Seasons and prestige and lore and so much baggage. I get so tired of asking “wait, can I earn the blue triangles by playing, do they cost real money, do I trade orange circles for them…?”

[–] Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The very first time a game tells me I have to pay for something with real currency in game that isn't purely cosmetic, it gets dropped. It'll be a cold day in hell before I let a game tell me that the blue triangles are mtx only.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Generally agreed. But it shocks me just how many games out there are making crazy amounts of money just selling cosmetics. I still remember horse armor! It was a scandal!

[–] smort@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

One of the reasons I still play rocket league now and then. Everyone else can have all the rare cosmetics they want, and great for them.

But when the match starts, we’re all on a level playing field (lol), and when the match ends, it’s because the winning team just executed better.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I tend to find this type of game at least a little less depressing. A fun little skill test with a social component.

[–] TryingToEscapeTarkov@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I started a game that had been out for only hours (the Finals) and people already had advanced builds and insane map knowledge. These guys are preordering and then no lifeing the closed beta. Its crazy man.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Gotta love dropping $100 on a free game before it’s even out, then drip-feeding it thousands more over time when the game intrinsically provides nothing more than a highly engineered dopamine drip. No story, no meaningful progression, no value or benefit to you as a human, just obsessively learning and mastering a skill that has literally only one purpose on the planet: playing that game.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm glad I learned this lesson back in the N64 days when I used cheat codes on Turok to get all the guns and infinite ammo. It was fun for a little while but ended up ruining the game for me. There was one weapon that had a piece hidden in each level and then you only get three shots with it. With the cheats, I just went around spamming it until bored, but then I found I wasn't really motivated to play the game properly. Going out and finding the stuff was as much the game as using it.

So when MTX came along, I remember thinking "holy shit, that's going to make money" after seeing Blizzard failing to stop people from giving money to gold farmers even though they'd sometimes remove items or ban accounts they'd catch doing it. But I also never had much temptation to buy them myself because I knew that I would just be spending money to get bored of the game quicker after a brief time of feeling like I was awesome (which would also be false because putting money into a machine isn't awesome).

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I’ve become much more of a believer in the craft of a tight, solid experience. That’s so much harder to find than a repeatedly gratifying but ultimately meaningless interaction.

[–] ComradeWeebelo@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

It's by Nexon anyway. If you don't play it you probably dodged a bullet. Their games are extremely P2W and they literally pioneered the earn in-game currency that you can only use to trial weapons and characters method of wealth extraction. It's been so long since I've played one of their games, but that form of microtransaction has always stuck with me as a "if I see it, I'm immediately deleting your game" approach to gaming.